cmunic8r99:Popcorn Johnny: Maybe they should stay focused on making a good mobile browser first.

I'd be happy if they (still) made a decent desktop browser.

If you'd asked me a few years ago I doubt I would have foreseen that I'd have switched to Chrome for pretty much everything by now. I love the integration from my laptop to my phone, and it doesn't crash on me a few times a week like FireFox.

davidphogan:cmunic8r99: Popcorn Johnny: Maybe they should stay focused on making a good mobile browser first.

I'd be happy if they (still) made a decent desktop browser.

If you'd asked me a few years ago I doubt I would have foreseen that I'd have switched to Chrome for pretty much everything by now. I love the integration from my laptop to my phone, and it doesn't crash on me a few times a week like FireFox.

I switched to Chrome a couple of months ago and love it so far. I have had one problem, though. After launching, it's fine until the first time I open a page with Flash on it. Then it locks up for about a minute. After that it's fine. Not sure how to get it to stop doing that.

Every time I try chrome, it can't handle the abuse I throw at it, it fails my acid test (opening hundreds of tabs at once). Firefox (once tweaked to hell and back) handles things fine.

The way my system is set up, Firefox is more stable, I did spend a lot of time tweaking Firefox though.

Chrome IS faster than Firefox when you only open a few tabs, but I use TONS of tabs and I end up seeing this far too often

// the last full acid test I did was back in 2010, so when I have a chance I need to do an updated one (maybe when I get back this evening). 201 tabs in chrome vs 201 tabs in firefox.http://lordargent.com/temp/tech/chrome_firefox_201_tabs.png// I don't care for the chrome UI so even if the browsers were equivalent performance wise, I would still be in the Firefox camp. Chrome would have to be several steps above to make up for the discordant UI.

Every time I try chrome, it can't handle the abuse I throw at it, it fails my acid test (opening hundreds of tabs at once). Firefox (once tweaked to hell and back) handles things fine.

[lordargent.com image 466x137]

The way my system is set up, Firefox is more stable, I did spend a lot of time tweaking Firefox though.

Chrome IS faster than Firefox when you only open a few tabs, but I use TONS of tabs and I end up seeing this far too often

[lordargent.com image 748x565]

// the last full acid test I did was back in 2010, so when I have a chance I need to do an updated one (maybe when I get back this evening). 201 tabs in chrome vs 201 tabs in firefox.http://lordargent.com/temp/tech/chrome_firefox_201_tabs.png// I don't care for the chrome UI so even if the browsers were equivalent performance wise, I would still be in the Firefox camp. Chrome would have to be several steps above to make up for the discordant UI.

Is their any good reason to having 200 tabs open at once except to say "I have a browser set up that can open 200 tabs at once"?

Every time I try chrome, it can't handle the abuse I throw at it, it fails my acid test (opening hundreds of tabs at once). Firefox (once tweaked to hell and back) handles things fine.

[lordargent.com image 466x137]

The way my system is set up, Firefox is more stable, I did spend a lot of time tweaking Firefox though.

Chrome IS faster than Firefox when you only open a few tabs, but I use TONS of tabs and I end up seeing this far too often

[lordargent.com image 748x565]

// the last full acid test I did was back in 2010, so when I have a chance I need to do an updated one (maybe when I get back this evening). 201 tabs in chrome vs 201 tabs in firefox.http://lordargent.com/temp/tech/chrome_firefox_201_tabs.png// I don't care for the chrome UI so even if the browsers were equivalent performance wise, I would still be in the Firefox camp. Chrome would have to be several steps above to make up for the discordant UI.

I haven't gone back to Firefox since switching to Chrome, but none of the browsers are perfect. I often have a lot of tabs open, too, and yes, I was getting those "oops" screens, more for a short while than lately, but I still get them.

My biggest problem was that Firefox was making my entire system unstable for some reason... a neat trick, for sure, when no other apps I ran had done anything like that before. At least with Chrome, the only issue I have is when it gobbles up too much physical memory.

Pros:• Built-in web developer tools are excellent. The 3D view is actually quite useful for visualizing CSS and selecting just the CSS element you want in the Inspector. Nobody else has that that I know of.• Gecko engine has nearly all of CSS3 and HTML5 implemented well, and has lots of cool features of its own.• You can now tell it to, when re-opening a saved session, not to actually download a tab's content until you click on it. This greatly helps alleviate the memory issues.• You can also, in the latest versions, tell it not to activate plug-ins on pages without your say-so. No more buggy memory-hogging Flash ads running without your permission (of course, NoScript does this and more).

Cons:• Still, even approaching version 20, this is the only modern browser that cannot allow multiple windows or tabs opened onto the same site at the same time, each with a different cookie space (e.g. allowing you to be both logged in and not logged in [in two different windows or tabs] at the same time, or logged in as Admin and as a lesser-privileged user to verify that permissions are working as they should, etc.). Even WinIE 8 can do this! So can Opera, let alone Chrome or Safari. But Firefox? Nope. If you try to enter Private Browsing mode, it still requires you to close all your existing windows and tabs, promising to re-open them when you exit, so you can't have multiple cookie spaces open simultaneously. Even the Cookie Switcher third-party add-on (extension) only allows switching between cookie sets, not having multiple sets active simultaneously.

1000Monkeys:Yeah, but why Firefox? They don't seem to care about Chrome and it's already at 25 despite being half the age of Firefox.

It's not the number, it's the frequency of updates. It's annoying to have to wait very often when opening the browser for it to update itself. And quite often even a small point update will break a random assortment of add ons. They're doing exactly what Netscape did that caused them to lose the browser was to IE. I don't know if they're bad at testing or just have a culture of frequent releases but it makes for an annoying experience.

Chrome lately hasn't been all roses either. For some reason in Chrome, and only Chrome, links on certain website won't open. If I right click to open in a new tab or window, it works fine but simply clicking a link to load that page in the current Chrome window does nothing. Very annoying.

ActionJoe: Is their any good reason to having 200 tabs open at once except to say "I have a browser set up that can open 200 tabs at once"?

For 200 tabs, yes

I do some tech resource, so I have to skim news stories and journals on a somewhat regular basis. I get these through RSS feeds and every few days I will go in and see about a thousand articles.

I first filter the feeds down based on keywords (I don't care about bio stuff, so I skip it, I care about chips and such, so I keep them, etc). That gets me down to around 200 or so articles.

I open those 200 articles in new tabs (thanks to adblock and noscript, these articles are mostly text).

Then I filter them down further by either pressing CTRL+TAB to move to the next tab in firefox (meaning I will read this article) or I press CTRL+W to close a tab in firefox (I won't read that article). I can do this very very rapidly because all of the tabs are up and loaded in the background (vs loading one tab after another and waiting for the content to download).

The end result is that I will read about 20-30 articles out of that ~200.

Ah, well. Gone to download new beta. :-) Other new features look cool, too, such as the 45-second plug-in timeout [like the existing JavaScript one], allowing you to abort a locked-up plugin! I just hope it fixes the Style Editor bug that made that feature all but useless once you used it on one page in a browser session.

ActionJoe:lordargent: And for the record, I'm firmly in the Firefox camp.

Every time I try chrome, it can't handle the abuse I throw at it, it fails my acid test (opening hundreds of tabs at once). Firefox (once tweaked to hell and back) handles things fine.

[lordargent.com image 466x137]

The way my system is set up, Firefox is more stable, I did spend a lot of time tweaking Firefox though.

Chrome IS faster than Firefox when you only open a few tabs, but I use TONS of tabs and I end up seeing this far too often

[lordargent.com image 748x565]

// the last full acid test I did was back in 2010, so when I have a chance I need to do an updated one (maybe when I get back this evening). 201 tabs in chrome vs 201 tabs in firefox.http://lordargent.com/temp/tech/chrome_firefox_201_tabs.png// I don't care for the chrome UI so even if the browsers were equivalent performance wise, I would still be in the Firefox camp. Chrome would have to be several steps above to make up for the discordant UI.

Is their any good reason to having 200 tabs open at once except to say "I have a browser set up that can open 200 tabs at once"?

/The answer is no

Probably not 200 but I've caught myself, quite a few times with, 50+ tabs open.

firefox is great, im assuming the majority of complainers have got extensions and plugins coming out their ears. as long as you keep your software updated and minimalistic its beautiful. I can regularly get 20 tabs going no issues.

Dr. Goldshnoz:firefox is great, im assuming the majority of complainers have got extensions and plugins coming out their ears. as long as you keep your software updated and minimalistic its beautiful. I can regularly get 20 tabs going no issues.

cant wait till we move on from flash and java plugins though.

I still use Firefox. I can see the frustration with the frequent large updates but otherwise I haven't had the motivation to try Chrome. If there is something similar to Noscript and/or flashblock on Chrome, I might change my mind. Otherwise, I demand little from a browser.

I was using Seamonkey until a few years ago, but I eventually gave up on it due to constant plugin disappointments. Now it's FireFox and Thunderbird.

At the end of the day I'm sure Mozilla's choice of programming environment for their mobile OS has its advantages over the other offerings out there and makes a programmer's life easier in many ways.

That said does the program really want another platform? Sure this one does A,B, and C better. It also does D,E, and F worse. Even worse it adds yet another platform. A mobile programmer already has iOS and Android to deal with (possibly multiple versions of each and multiple screen resolutions depending on the number of cellphones and tablets they target). Then WinMo is lurking around back there as well.

MrEricSir:1000Monkeys: MrEricSir: 1000Monkeys: Why do people care so much about about Firefox's version numbers (or care about version numbers at all)?

You haven't noticed that the majority of nerds have severe OCD? Really?

Yeah, but why Firefox? They don't seem to care about Chrome and it's already at 25 despite being half the age of Firefox.

/ Guess it's a case of out of sight, out of mind

Chrome has had rapidly increasing version numbers since day one. Their problem isn't that Firefox uses the same scheme, their problem is that Firefox's version scheme changed.

And we all know how OCD types are with inconsistencies.

The real problem is Firefox's dev cycle is run by hyper active and possible drug addled monkeys. They constantly push new updates that break all the plugins on the mere rumor of some exploit (which has yet to seen in the wild) or just because some dev wanted to make some changes for whatever reason. Or at least they did back when I used it. I got stick of playing the "Update Firefox, wait for the plugins to catch up, update the plugins" game.

Basically the allure of FF was all the awesome plugins you could get, but Mozilla treated the plugins like steerage class and never seemed to give them an environment to be stable in.

ha-ha-guy: The real problem is Firefox's dev cycle is run by hyper active and possible drug addled monkeys. They constantly push new updates that break all the plugins on the mere rumor of some exploit (which has yet to seen in the wild) or just because some dev wanted to make some changes for whatever reason. Or at least they did back when I used it. I got stick of playing the "Update Firefox, wait for the plugins to catch up, update the plugins" game.

The dumb thing is that plugins tend to work in newer versions because there's not enough of a change between versions of firefox to affect most plugins.

However, they started doing stupid shiat like automatically disabling old plugins on upgrades.

There used to be an about:config setting to prevent this, but then I think they got rid of that setting so that now you have to install the add on compatibility reporter to prevent them from being disabled.

The add on compatibility reporter adds an icon to your status bar that I haven't figured out how to get rid of (short of disabling AOCR)

ha-ha-guy:MrEricSir: 1000Monkeys: MrEricSir: 1000Monkeys: Why do people care so much about about Firefox's version numbers (or care about version numbers at all)?

You haven't noticed that the majority of nerds have severe OCD? Really?

Yeah, but why Firefox? They don't seem to care about Chrome and it's already at 25 despite being half the age of Firefox.

/ Guess it's a case of out of sight, out of mind

Chrome has had rapidly increasing version numbers since day one. Their problem isn't that Firefox uses the same scheme, their problem is that Firefox's version scheme changed.

And we all know how OCD types are with inconsistencies.

The real problem is Firefox's dev cycle is run by hyper active and possible drug addled monkeys. They constantly push new updates that break all the plugins on the mere rumor of some exploit (which has yet to seen in the wild) or just because some dev wanted to make some changes for whatever reason. Or at least they did back when I used it. I got stick of playing the "Update Firefox, wait for the plugins to catch up, update the plugins" game.

Basically the allure of FF was all the awesome plugins you could get, but Mozilla treated the plugins like steerage class and never seemed to give them an environment to be stable in.

/maybe it has gotten better

It's gotten a lot better. The plugin API hasn't had any major changes in a while, most plugins work fine between updates.

davidphogan:f you'd asked me a few years ago I doubt I would have foreseen that I'd have switched to Chrome for pretty much everything by now. I love the integration from my laptop to my phone, and it doesn't crash on me a few times a week like FireFox.

lordargent:ActionJoe: Is their any good reason to having 200 tabs open at once except to say "I have a browser set up that can open 200 tabs at once"?

For 200 tabs, yes

I do some tech resource, so I have to skim news stories and journals on a somewhat regular basis. I get these through RSS feeds and every few days I will go in and see about a thousand articles.

I first filter the feeds down based on keywords (I don't care about bio stuff, so I skip it, I care about chips and such, so I keep them, etc). That gets me down to around 200 or so articles.

I open those 200 articles in new tabs (thanks to adblock and noscript, these articles are mostly text).

Then I filter them down further by either pressing CTRL+TAB to move to the next tab in firefox (meaning I will read this article) or I press CTRL+W to close a tab in firefox (I won't read that article). I can do this very very rapidly because all of the tabs are up and loaded in the background (vs loading one tab after another and waiting for the content to download).

The end result is that I will read about 20-30 articles out of that ~200.

Every time I try chrome, it can't handle the abuse I throw at it, it fails my acid test (opening hundreds of tabs at once). Firefox (once tweaked to hell and back) handles things fine.

The way my system is set up, Firefox is more stable, I did spend a lot of time tweaking Firefox though.

Chrome IS faster than Firefox when you only open a few tabs, but I use TONS of tabs and I end up seeing this far too often

// the last full acid test I did was back in 2010, so when I have a chance I need to do an updated one (maybe when I get back this evening). 201 tabs in chrome vs 201 tabs in firefox.http://lordargent.com/temp/tech/chrome_firefox_201_tabs.png// I don't care for the chrome UI so even if the browsers were equivalent performance wise, I would still be in the Firefox camp. Chrome would have to be several steps above to make up for the discordant UI.

Whh the fark would anyone need that many tabs? That's not practical at all!

FaygoMaster:Dr. Goldshnoz: firefox is great, im assuming the majority of complainers have got extensions and plugins coming out their ears. as long as you keep your software updated and minimalistic its beautiful. I can regularly get 20 tabs going no issues.

cant wait till we move on from flash and java plugins though.

I still use Firefox. I can see the frustration with the frequent large updates but otherwise I haven't had the motivation to try Chrome. If there is something similar to Noscript and/or flashblock on Chrome, I might change my mind. Otherwise, I demand little from a browser.

I was using Seamonkey until a few years ago, but I eventually gave up on it due to constant plugin disappointments. Now it's FireFox and Thunderbird.

Chrome has Flashblock by two devs, FlashFree by another with the same purpose, Adblock, AdblockPlus, 15 other different Ad blocking extensions, Ghostery, NotScripts, and ScriptSafe.

I will say personally, neither NotScripts not ScriptSafe is 100% what NoScript on Firefox is. That said, with Ghostery I haven't really used NoScript (or a direct equivalent) in about a year.

gsiofa : That's hardly a fair comparison. Chrome has plugins and add-ons, and what not. Maybe you'd like it more if you tweaked it. How about comparing stock Firefox to stock Chrome?

1) If chrome out of the box can't handle that many tabs, then adding plugins and add-ons is not going to help it.

The reason Chrome croaks with lots of tabs open is due to the architecture. It spawns processes for each new tab. This makes it faster and more stable when dealing with a small number of tabs, the overhead brings it crashing to the ground when you open a large number of tabs.

No plugin or add-on is going to fix that.

2) I don't like the Chrome UI and how it doesn't follow the conventions of the host OS, so it already has a negative from me and would have to be head and shoulders above to warrant a switch.